During a conversation with a ‘plumb tuckered out’ national specialty show chairperson, they announced they were planning to resign their position after their upcoming national specialty. I was, of course, sympathetic having served in such capacity twice before, and I began discussing an idea I had that is best described as ‘enhanced parent club shared services.’ More specifically, what I have in mind are related breed’s hosting their national specialties together while sharing services.

Sure, today several breeds are holding their regional specialties together with advertised “combined specialties.” However, after review, these events appear many times to be a discombobulation of various, unrelated breeds. Likewise, many of our low-entry and ‘rare’ breeds often hold their national specialty in conjunction with a well-known, all-breed circuit. This often results in building major championship points, but at the end of the day, there is nothing ‘special” about the shows themselves. These often are merely another all-breed dog show experience. Like-kind group breeds such as English and American Foxhounds, Harriers, Black & Tan’s, Treeing Walkers, Redbones, etcetera, along with the many other low-entry breeds, all deserve an annual national specialty festival. The same can be said for many of our field hunting breeds, some of whose numbers are very low. The proposed, combined national specialties place these rare breeds in the limelight, and not just as supported entries on yet another all-breed circuit.

Yes, today we have something similar, such as Montgomery County, a Terrier presentation, or the Hound Classic in Southern California composed of independent regional specialties. However, these shows are in the same location, year-after-year and do not wander around the country, allowing for diversified competition. They present more of a micro-habitat for those breeds in attendance. These events are not parent club annual celebrations with dinners and breed related contests like earth dog tests or lure coursing trials or offer educational seminars over the course of the week. Another significant difference is that these well-known classics and others like them culminate in a Best in Show finale which is not the intent of the consolidation of parent club national specialties and their shared services. There is no best in group competition.

Currently, Parent Club’s organize independent national specialties across the country all the while incurring excessive costs for just up to two hundred entries. We should consider consolidating some of these national specialties, holding them simultaneously resulting in shared costs. Therefore, expenses decrease for each parent club. All-breed circuits have been doing a similar version for years now banding together to increase entries while reducing equipment and site costs. First, clearly savings is in labor. The previously mentioned show chairwoman and others like them work tirelessly to organize such events, sometimes with limited assistance from other fanciers. Let us consider several related breeds, e.g., the Scottish Deerhound, Irish Wolfhound, Greyhound, and Borzoi. These breeds' recent show statistics reveal a combined total of 682 entries in competition at their past national specialties. The 2015 Irish Wolfhound national specialty had 169 entries; the 2015 Scottish Deerhound national specialty had 126 entries; the 2015 Borzoi national specialty had 331 entries, and the Greyhound national specialty (as far as I can ascertain) had 56 entries. Please note when I first published this article, in 2012, the combined numbers were 513 entries for all these breeds. We expect fluctuation as shown by the figures, but that makes my case even stronger. Fluctuation is the curse of an accounting ledger and proper planning. 

Nonetheless, each parent club had to spend good money and expend labor independently of one another with four show chairpersons performing the same work for limited and unprofitable entries. Each show chairperson negotiated, scheduled, and supervised the same responsibilities for their independent parent club national specialty. A combination of shared services would be advantageous for these national organizations to consolidate and divvy up the work between themselves. One breed show chair may oversee hotel(s) accommodations, another focuses on RV parking and vendors, yet another agrees to manage equipment and tent rentals, and so on. It is a huge, labor saver.

The second readily perceived benefit of such alliances is economics. Shared services do what the expression infers -- it shares services but also costs. Let’s face reality, everything is getting more expensive. Mainly, equipment rentals, hotels, banquet, and club meeting room rentals, as well as associated professional fees. None of these are decreasing. The cost savings can be compelling. Individual tents, indoor hall and equipment rentals can consume a large portion of the pie compared to group rentals and shared costs of such. Today, hotel discounts may depend on the number of club member room bookings or the organization does not receive discounts in other negotiable areas. Similarly, club dinners hosted at headquarter hotels typically require a set number of people to pre-register or the club has to ‘eat the difference.’ Today, attendance at club dinner or banquet events has markedly decreased. The disinterest and subsequent poor attendance at such dinners may be due to boredom, stale company, or often mediocre to the poor quality of food such as cheap buffets or convention quality meals. On the other hand, think about if we were to join ranks using the example of the previously mentioned sighthound breeds. We could enjoy a combined dinner event for everyone, instead of four separate club meals in different locations of the country with various hotel requirements. Think about the interest this dinner event would create with the exciting prospect of meeting new people from other breeds. I envisage the opportunity for good debates, discussions on the various breeds’ health and anatomy issues, or the ability to obtain valuable advice from a different breed fancier with another perspective.

Another benefit, picture the increase of miscellaneous items available for auction or raffles and the number of other people who may be interested. Think about the added number of show vendors if there was related, multi-breed, multi-day national specialty events for them to sell their wares. Case in point, I purchased nearly $300 of handmade, high-quality leather goods from a vendor while attending the multi-day Scottish Deerhound National Specialty even though we do not have Deerhounds but a related breed, Irish Wolfhounds. Today, we do see occasional fanciers spectating at other breed specialty’s, but this number pales in comparison to how many people would be in attendance if we united our like-kind breed national specialties. Also, consider the number of foreign visitors and aspiring judges who may attend for the collaboration of related breed national specialties promoted as the event of the year! Granted that there are breeds that are too populous to combine their national specialty events with another breed. They are very fortunate not to have such a dilemma of roughly 200 entries, sometimes less, at their national specialty. For the rest of us, there should be an extraordinary appeal for combined breed related, multi-day national specialties, in particular for the accounting ledgers.

This edited article first appeared on The Canine Chronicle website in a previous version. Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=10222